Chapter 63
The secret room was cold the way Leonard liked it.
No windows. Multiple screens. Everything else dark.
He'd been in here for two hours.
Files spread across the monitor, pulled from sources that didn't officially exist. His contact in London had come through forty minutes ago.
Another in Mexico thirty minutes after that. Pieces arriving slowly, one by one, like a puzzle assembling itself in real time.
Leonard leaned forward, elbows on the desk, eyes sharp.
Caspian Virell.
Transferred into All Elites mid semester. No prior enrollment record before three years ago. Clean background. Too clean.
The kind of clean that was built, not lived.
Leonard had known something was wrong the moment he saw him watching Aurora in class on his first day.
Nobody looked at her like that accidentally.
He pulled up the comparison file his contact had sent.
Two images side by side.
Caspian Virell. Current.
Zane Saunders. Four years ago.
Different nose. Different jaw. Softer features overall. Whoever did the surgery was good.
But Leonard's contact hadn't run a standard facial match.
He'd run orbital biometrics.
The distance between the eyes. The bone structure above and below. The one thing surgery couldn't touch without blinding someone.
97.3% match.
Leonard stared at the number for a long moment.
Then he leaned back slowly in his chair.
Zane Saunders.
The name meant nothing to him yet. But the syndicate flag attached to it did. His contact had highlighted it in red. Imperio Del Pecado (Empire Of Sin). Mexico based.
Organ harvesting. Kidnapping. International drug movement.
Leonard's jaw tightened.
Zane had been inside their college.
Walking the same corridors. Sitting in the same spaces.
Watching Aurora from a distance close enough to touch.
And nobody knew.
Leonard closed the files one by one.
Then he sat in the dark for a moment, completely still.
When he finally moved, it was slow and deliberate. He reached for his phone and typed one message to his contact.
“I need everything. Full history. Associates. Last known operations. And I need it by morning.”
He sent it and set the phone down.
His eyes moved back to the orbital match on the screen.
97.3%.
He looked at Caspian's face for a long time.
He shut down all the systems.
And sat in the dark.
★
Music. Too loud. Distorted. The kind that bounced off walls and lost its shape entirely.
Lights.
Flashing. Red then white then dark then red again. Strobing through a space that felt both enormous and suffocating at the same time.
And then…
Her.
Younger. Smaller. Standing in the middle of it all like something had gone terribly wrong and her body hadn't caught up to her mind yet.
She was wearing something she didn't recognize. Her hair was down. Her hands were shaking.
Someone was shouting.
Not at her. Not exactly. But close enough that the sound pressed against her chest like a hand pushing her backward.
She didn't know where to go.
She turned once. Twice. Looking for something familiar. A face. A door.
Anything.
The lights kept flashing.
The music kept going.
And then…
A door. Somewhere ahead. Someone pulling her toward it. Fast. Too fast. Her feet barely keeping up.
Everything was wrong. The smell was getting stronger and her lungs were shrinking and…
Aurora's eyes flew open. She gasp for air like she couldn't breath before.
She sat up so fast the room spun.
Darkness. Her room. Her bed.
The weird dreams are back. The crazy chaotic dreams.
She pressed both hands flat against the mattress, grounding herself. Her chest was heaving. Her hair was damp against her neck.
The sheets beneath her hands were twisted like she'd been fighting something in her sleep.
The clock on her nightstand read 12:08 AM.
She sat there for a long moment, just breathing.
The dream was already dissolving at the edges the way dreams did. But the smell lingered. Alcohol. Sharp and real enough that she almost looked around the room for the source.
There was nothing there.
She pressed her fingers against her temple.
Her head was pounding.
She reached for the glass of water Nanny Mira had left on the nightstand and drank slowly, eyes fixed on the dark window across the room.
The party.
She didn't know how she knew that's what it was. She had no clear image. No faces.
Just feeling. Just the specific fear of a younger version of herself standing in the middle of something that had already gone wrong.
She set the glass down.
Pulled her knees to her chest.
And sat in the dark, very still, waiting for her heart to slow down.
It took a long time.
★
[NEXT MORNING]
Aurora woke up sideways.
Half her body was hanging off the bed, one leg dangling, face buried in the wrong end of the pillow. She lay there for a moment, staring at the floor from upside down, blinking slowly.
She had no memory of moving.
She straightened herself out, pushed her hair from her face and sat up.
Her head was heavy. Not painful. Just full. Like something had been rearranging itself inside while she slept.
She sat on the edge of the bed for a moment.
Then she got up, got dressed, and decided not to think about it.
Elara was already downstairs.
She was eating toast, phone in hand, scrolling through something that clearly wasn't holding her attention. She looked up when Aurora appeared.
"Morning," Elara said.
"Morning," Aurora replied, heading straight for the coffee.
Normal silence passed between them.
Elara watched her pour, opened her mouth once, then closed it and looked back at her phone.
Aurora noticed. She just didn't have the energy to address it today. Whatever was sitting on Elara's chest had been there for days. It would surface when it surfaced.
She drank her coffee standing up, staring out the kitchen window at nothing.
Xander came downstairs three minutes later.
"Morning people," he announced to no one.
"You look terrible," Aurora said.
"Thank you," he replied, completely unbothered.
Elara almost smiled. Almost.
They left in separate cars.
Aurora's Tesla first. Then Xander's car.
Then Elara with Nanny Mira on the way to an errand.
Aurora drove in silence, one hand on the wheel, music low.
The dream kept pushing at the edges of her thoughts.
The smell of alcohol. The flashing lights.
That voice.
She kept pushing back.
It was nothing. Just a dream.
The girls were already at the entrance when she arrived.
Oma spotted her immediately and the look on her face said the conversation was fully loaded and ready.
Aurora barely had her bag on her shoulder before it started.
"You didn't answer my call last night," Oma said.
"I was asleep."
"I called at eleven thirty."
"People do be asleep at eleven thirty, Ms Oma."
"Aurora… "
"Oma." Aurora looked at her flatly. "Good morning. I'm here. I'm alive. Can we move."
Oma pressed her lips together. Looked at Ivy. Ivy gave a small shrug.
Roseanne fell into step beside Aurora.
"You good though? For real?"
"For real," Aurora said simply.
Roseanne nodded and let it go.
They moved through the entrance together. Aurora's mind was somewhere else entirely. She barely heard Ivy talking about something that happened in her building last night. She nodded in the right places. Said nothing in the wrong ones.
She was thinking about the dream again.
Her younger self standing in the middle of something that had already gone terribly wrong.
She was so deep in her own head that she didn't notice the floor.
The corridor turned slightly and the tiles near the window were damp from where the cleaning staff had mopped too close to the edge. No sign. No warning.
Her foot hit it wrong.
Her ankle twisted.
She lurched forward…
And didn't fall.
An arm caught her from behind. Firm. Immediate. Like it had been ready.
She grabbed the forearm instinctively, heart jumping into her throat.
She turned.
Sean.
He was looking down at her with that usual expression of his, arm still around her. His eyes moved over her face quickly.
"Careful," he said lowly.
Aurora straightened. Stepped back. His arm fell away.
"Thanks," she said simply, then turned forward and kept walking without another word.
Oma watched the whole thing with the expression of someone physically restraining themselves.
Aurora ignored her.
The girls disappeared into the building together, voices swallowed by the corridor crowd.
Outside, Leonard's car pulled in.
He stepped out, door closing behind him, and stood for a moment.
Ricky came up beside him. "You're late."
"I'm here," Leonard replied flatly.
His phone buzzed.
He looked down.
One message.
~ Syndicate location, untraceable. Disguised too well. Too many layers. Every lead goes cold. Whoever built it knew exactly what they were doing. No coordinates. No confirmed base. Nothing.
Leonard stared at the screen.
Then he looked up at the building entrance where Aurora had just disappeared.
Zane was somewhere waiting, he's smart and he's waiting to attack.
A smile tugged at Leonard's lips. His usual smile.
“Hide and seek. Shall we?...”
TBC…